We write this text to warn against the umpteenth worrying reactionary drift of some well-known characters who still find accessibility within the anarchist scene, in Italy (less and less) and abroad, despite the fact that in recent years they have accumulated a series of alliances and embarrassing speeches, tending to the most extreme populism and increasingly close to the right-wing world.
We are talking about the organizers of the Three Days against Technoscience, also involved in the website Resistance to Nanoworld, the magazine L’Urlo della Terra and in the documentation space La Piralide in Bergamo.
For the three international days against technoscience that will be held in Alessandria (for the third consecutive year), characters such as Maurizio Martucci and Daniela Danna are invited to speak this time.
Maurizio Martucci, spokesperson and founder of “Alleanza italiana Stop 5G”, wrote a few years ago an article to commemorate the history of Meridiano Zero: a fascist group born in 1991 by the will of exiles from Alemanno’s Fronte della Gioventù*, inspired by the Political Movement Ordine Nuovo* and Julius Evola, and dissolved two years later. On October 4, 1991 the first group of militants of Meridiano Zero became the protagonist of violent incidents with members of the student collectives of the extreme left in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Rome.
The group Meridiano Zero proposed itself as projected into the future, “beyond right and left” (inspired by Terza Posizione*), but we know that these expressions are often used as a strategy by neo-fascist groups, as is clear from these words: “commemorative neo-fascism is alien to us. Fascism and Nazism are of interest to us as historical phases representing ethical values, but we are concerned with the future: we are just a group of young people not homologated to the masses”. It is no coincidence that the group Meridiano Zero will then inspire the birth of Casa Pound*.
In the mentioned article, Martucci praises the fascists of Meridiano Zero as being “against genetic manipulation, in defense of all that is natural, against the wild technological development”. The term they coined “tecnorebels” is still used by Martucci as a slogan and also appears in the text of the presentation of his speech at the Three Days Against Technoscience.
Here the article: https://www.ultimavoce.it/meridiano-zero-solstizio-tecnoribelli/ Maurizio Martucci’s book on 5G (“# STOP 5G Health, environment, geopolitics, privacy, transhumanism and social control”) was also presented on July 22, 2021 at La Piralide in Bergamo, a “radical ecologist” space run by the same people behind Three Days Against Technoscience, Resistance to Nanoworld and L’Urlo della Terra.
Should we say something more? Isn’t it enough to say that in the past that the organizers of this three-day event wrote articles in the ecological magazine “L’urlo della terra” that to an unobservant (it would be better to say unempathetic) eye may be critical of technologies but have a transphobic and essentialist basis? Yet the attacks in the articles of this newspaper have been exposed for long time, articles where, in order to talk about transhumanism, technologies, feminism, they fall into transphobic, anti-queer and essentialist discourses that would be worthy of being included in catholic and fascist magazines.
Since a long time it has been highlighted (also because they are not hidden at all) the disconcerting alliances between Silvia Guerini and groups like Arcilesbica, transphobic lesbian women groups, as well as her articles and books that besides being against technoscience (and we are too!) point the finger on trans people as if they were promoters of transhumanism. Without ever forgetting, and we don’t want to forget, that Silvia Guerini wrote in the past homophobic leaflets and a book against abortion (to be correct we point out that Silvia has distanced herself from this book, revising her position against abortion and asking not to spread the book anymore – which however remains available in the catalog of Arkiviu-Bibrioteka T. Serra editions).
Of the same tone is the increasingly close collaboration between Silvia Guerini and Daniela Danna, an academic sociologist who in recent years has adhered to TERF (transphobic radical feminist) positions, writing texts and publishing translations on her website that reproduce verbatim the worst arguments of the American TERF wave: the alarm about the “trans lobby” that would be taking over the world, the denial of the concept of gender identity, the denial of the existence of trans children, the claim that trans people are nothing more than gays and lesbians who do not accept themselves as such, the description of trans women as “men” who invade women’s spaces with the intention of raping them, and so on. Daniela Danna’s transphobic book “The Little Prince” was presented at La Piralide a couple of years ago, accompanied by controversy, and the sociologist will be speaking again this year, as she did last year, at the Three Days Against Technoscience. On July 3, 2021 Daniela Danna and Silvia Guerini also participated together, with speeches, in a conference with the title “A world without mothers?” in which maternity is described as a “natural destiny linked to the identification of the woman with the mother” and the modern freedom of choice and the consequent choice of many women not to become mothers is lamented.
Last year, at the Three Days Against Technoscience, among others the French ecological collective Pièces et Mains d’Oeuvre was invited to hold a lecture, whose racist, misogynist, homophobic and transphobic as well as politically ambiguous positions have already been abundantly highlighted. The TERF positions of the collective Resistenze al Nanomondo have also been made explicit, not only in the collaborations with Daniela Danna, Arcilesbica and with the contents of several articles they have published, but also in the space they have given on their website to presentations of transphobic feminist authors, such as the presentation of Sheila Jeffreys scheduled last March in Italy and focused as well on the defense of the true “woman” in front of the alleged danger brought by the trans movement.
To mention another episode, again in the space of documentation La Piralide of Bergamo, recently was presented the book “Il giallo del Coronavirus” by Sonia Savioli published by the Arianna publishing house, which “boasts” in its catalog books written by Alain De Benoist, founder of the movement called Nouvelle Droite (The New Right) in France, as well as anti-Semitic books and articles published on their website regarding the alleged “Jewish world conspiracy”, pro-Trump articles, conspiration theories and other garbage. We don’t have much information about Sonia Savioli, but we wonder how it is possible to present a book edited by a right-wing publishing house in a space crossed by anarchist individualities. And we also wonder how it is possible to include the presentation of the book against 5G by Maurizio Martucci.
Where are the organizers of this three-day international event attended by anarchists from all over the world going? What is not yet clear in front of these choices of the group of La Piralide, the magazine L’Urlo della Terra, the website Resistenze al Nanomondo and the organizers of this three- day event against technoscience?
Among other things, if the speeches and collusions with sexist, transphobic and right-wing people, groups, publishers were not enough, there is also very little anarchism in the fact of establishing alliances and collaborations with people linked to the world of institutions and media, such as with associations linked to parties (as is the case of Arcilesbica with the Democratic Party), mainstream journalists (Martucci), academic sociologists (Danna), and others, not to mention the embarrassing “Appeal for the abolition of any artificial reproduction of the human”, signed by Resistenze al Nanomondo together with Pièces et Mains d’oeuvre and others, which among other things asks the “national and international authorities” that any artificial reproduction of the human and any genetic modification of it be qualified as a “crime against the species”. Since when, for the anarchists, are the authorities of any kind considered interlocutors for their demands?
We think it’s time to start holding these characters accountable for their positions, people who until a few years ago were anarchists, and whose writings continue to find space even in anarchist distros, between a fanzine that hurls stones at patriarchy and an analysis on how trans people do not promote transhumanism, to detailed fanzines on the new and old right-wingers disguised as ecologists and anti-specialists.
We think that the group Resistenze al Nanomondo has an urgency to fight this world impregnated with technologies and faith in science, but to this aim you can’t give voice to everyone, overtaking divergences as if they were small obstacles to the struggles that we carry on with passion; this is the argument that is made by the new right-wingers, who say they have overcome the right and the left, to be something else, and who in this period of pandemic took to the streets shouting “freedom!” (often allying themselves with restaurateurs and bartenders – thus defending the interests of the bourgeoisie) and making us cringe.
Giving Maurizio Martucci the chance to participate in the Three Days against Technoscience, as well as presenting a book by Arianna editions is not an oversight, no, it is no longer possible to believe that. These characters know very well what they do and write, proof of this is the fact that they continue undaunted on their way despite having been warned several times about the type of collaborations they were establishing.
We believe it is time that even those who continue to give them space, to participate in their events and to distribute their materials ask themselves some questions and give themselves some answers about how and with whom they are carrying on the anarchist struggle against science and technology.
Anarchists
* italian fascist groups